


mau mea make ʻole (immortals)

by desitonystark



Series: the old guard AU [1]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Immortals, Alternate Universe - The Old Guard (Movie 2020) Fusion, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, M/M, Minor Character Death, POV Steve McGarrett, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:20:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27261877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desitonystark/pseuds/desitonystark
Summary: They're not Immortal, but they're the closest thing to it.(or, The Old Guard AU)
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Series: the old guard AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1990519
Comments: 15
Kudos: 101





	mau mea make ʻole (immortals)

**Author's Note:**

> there's dialogue that's directly lifted from the pilot, but otherwise everything is mine. the minor character death tag is for John McGarrett, and also because technically Danny does die for a couple of minutes. i apologise if the title is butchered hawaiian, i got it from google translate.

In reality, Steve should’ve started looking for _him_ the minute he showed up in Steve’s dreams. It’s never good to leave a potential Immortal in the line of fire, and _his_ job as a cop definitely didn’t help matters at all - but foolishly, Steve thought that his father would be able to handle it.

  
  
  
  


//

  
  
  
  


John McGarrett isn’t his father in the biological sense. He doesn’t have John’s brown eyes, or his distinctive jaw. His hair is brown where John’s is a burnt blonde. Steve stands at a tall 6 foot 2, whereas John barely reaches 5 foot 6. But John found him, dragged him six miles to a cottage shrouded by trees after a confederate shot Steve three times in the chest.

He found Steve, and he taught Steve and he’s looked after Steve all his Immortal life. Steve knows he had a life before his first Death, knows he had an actual father, and a wife waiting for him in Connecticut. He knows he had friends who fought alongside him. One of the things about being Immortal though, is that memories fade.

It’s both a blessing and a curse, and one of the first things that John ever taught him about being an Immortal, was that it was easier to think of his life as starting from the first time he Died.

Nobody knows how old John is. Not Chin, who drowned in the Battle of Busan, not Kono, who was a Geisha during the Invasion of Ryukyu - not even Joe, who’s been with John ever since John picked him up after he had an unfortunate run in with poison in the court of Henry VII.

John is the oldest of them all, and Steve is the youngest of them all. Traditionally, it is the responsibility of the youngest Immortal to look after their newest one after their first Death, but everything Steve knows - he learnt from John.

Perhaps that's why he expected John to take care of the new potential.

  
  
  
  


//

  
  
  
  


Strictly speaking, they aren’t Immortal. Nobody talks about it, but they all know that John used to have a companion. A woman by the name of Doris, who travelled with him from the very beginning. Both Joe and Chin knew her, for an age, but she was always John’s companion. That is, until the witch trials in the late 16th century. Chin and Joe were in Japan, chasing down leads on Kono, though they didn't know her name was Kono at the time - so they escaped the worst of it, but John’s never forgiven himself for not doing more to save Doris.

The worst thing for an Immortal isn’t dying, but being captured. They all know they’re going to die, that someday their healing will stop and their body won’t repair itself but there’s no way to tell how, or when.

One day, John was lying next to Doris, body curved around her as they basked in the warmth of their fire, and the next day, soldiers broke into their house and she was taken anyway.

Joe says that John spent almost a century looking for her before abruptly stopping one day; refusing to even acknowledge that she existed. Chin says that John’s still looking for her, that he hasn’t given up hope. 

  
  
  
  


//

  
  
  
  


Ostensibly, they’re supposed to all be warriors, to take on the work that mortals can’t do; to use their near unlimited time to help people. In reality, the only one of them who was born like that was Steve. Kono was a Geisha, Chin was a farmer in the wrong place at the wrong time, Joe was a noble who took the wrong drink.

They don’t know what John was before his first Death. He says that he’s forgotten, but Steve thinks that it’s too hard to think of who he used to be, so he pretends not to remember. 

A couple of decades after Steve’s been Immortal, after his fourth or fifth Death - John tells him that he’s going to teach Steve everything that he knows. They start with fighting styles, because John thinks it’s pathetic that Steve only knows how to defend himself when he’s behind the barrel of a gun, and then they graduate to war strategy and theory.

It’s not just John who pitches in on Steve’s education to become a one man army. All of them have picked up tricks of the trade over the years, but his primary instructor is still John. Steve takes to it like a fish takes to water. 

A couple of decades later, John shows up at one of their safehouses with registration papers and pushes them across the counter, and Steve looks down at them and smiles.

  
  
  
  


//

  
  
  
  


Anton was never supposed to die. It was never a part of the plan. Not because Steve has moral hang ups about death and killing, but because you couldn’t interrogate a corpse. _Dead men tell no tales_ and all that. Anton was never supposed to die, but Steve knew that it was a distinct possibility. He'd planned for it, had contingencies in place in case it happened.

John on the other hand, John, he never saw coming.

  
  
  
  


//

  
  
  
  


The entire flight back to Hawai’i, Steve is torn between feeling numb and disconnected, like he isn’t in his own body, and overwhelming rage simmering through his skin. He doesn’t know if he’s mad at John, for not telling him that he wasn’t healing anymore - or himself, for taking stupid risks with John’s life.

He was supposed to be back in Hawai’i three months ago, because a potential Immortal had just suffered his first Death and all of them were being plagued with dreams of a blond spitfire cop. Steve was too pre-occupied with chasing down the Hesse brothers though, and Chin, Kono and John were in Hawai’i - and they’d be much better at helping the new Immortal than he’d ever be.

Now, Steve would let Victor Hesse arm a thousand guerilla groups if it meant that he could get to Hawai’i and see John one last time.

“Commander?” the pilot turns to him, “There’s someone on the line for you.”

“Who?”

“It’s the Governor sir. She wants to meet you at Pearl Harbour. Says she has a job offer for you.”

Steve wants to say no, wants to say that he’s here to bury his father and do the job he’s meant to do - nothing more, nothing less. Immortals don’t put down roots, and a job is roots.

“Tell her I’ll see her there when I touch down.”

  
  
  
  


//

  
  
  
  


In the end, Steve doesn’t even have to go looking for _him,_ because _he_ finds Steve. Steve doesn’t know if it’s Chin’s influence, or it’s just a really busy day for crime, but the crime scene is practically untouched - which means that Steve has the opportunity to snoop around before the cops trample all over the house.

_Listen to me Champ, I’m sorry I lied to you. I love you son, I didn’t say it enough._

His hands hover over the old red toolbox when _he_ breaks into the garage, gun raised. He comes in so quietly that if he hadn’t said anything, Steve wouldn’t have even realised that there was somebody else present, but it’s belayed by his loud yelling.

“You!” Steve reaches for his gun on instinct alone, “Hands up! Don’t move!”

Still, he takes a second to react, because it’s one thing to see someone in your dreams, and another to see them in the flesh, standing in front of you. Belatedly, Steve’s first thought is that he’s much more attractive than the dreams made him out to be.

“Who are you?” Steve asks, gun still raised and it’s almost funny how _he_ asks Steve the same question back. Chin mentioned that they’d put a mainlander on his father’s case; but for some reason - Steve never made the connection.

“I am Detective Danny Williams,” he answers in that same aggressive tone, and it’s nice to put a name to the face. He’ll have to remember to catch Joe up on their new Immortal once he’s back stateside.

“Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett,” he talks over Danny, hoping that the emphasis on _McGarrett_ means that Danny will just leave the garage alone. The connection doesn’t seem to register immediately though, because Danny demands that he put his weapon down.

“No,” he says aggressively, taking a step towards Danny, “you put your weapon down. Show me your ID.”

“You show me your ID,” Danny says with a grunt, as if he’s offended that Steve could even question his credentials.

“I’m not putting my weapon down,” Steve says, and he knows from the slight tension in Danny’s shoulders that he’s not going to win this one.

“Neither am I.”

“Use your free hand, and take out your ID.”

“Please, after you.”

“At the same time?” Steve concedes, and Danny quirks an eyebrow at him, “What, like on the count of three?”

“Sure, okay - three’s good.”

“One -” Danny lets go of the grip on his gun, and it’s the opening that Steve needs. He tilts his gun slightly and shoots; grimacing when Danny falls to a graceless heap. He thinks he sees Danny hit his head on one of the boxes, and he winces in commiseration. Immortals might not always stay down, but that doesn’t mean they don’t feel pain.

  
  
  
  


//

  
  
  
  


“You shot me, you son of a bitch.”

Steve hums non-committedly, focused on the displacement of dust on John’s desk, “And yet here you are.”

“Hey, hey!” Steve turns his head when Danny raises his voice, “That’s not the point, the point is that you shot me. There’s a bullet hole that’s gone through a perfectly good tie, a tie that my daughter gave me.”

“So that’s who the little girl is,” Steve widens his eyes, “I didn’t realise you had one of those.”

“What do you mean, _that’s who the little girl is,_ ” Danny jams a finger against his chest, “Have you been stalking me, you sick son of a bitch?”

In one swift move, Steve twists Danny’s arm behind his back, pulling him against his chest - hard enough to bruise. 

“Look, you might not like me, but you need me. This was your second Death, which means you’re only going to start healing quicker from now on, and you need somebody to help you figure out how to do that. Now normally that would be my father, but as I’m sure you can tell from the crime scene we’re in - he’s dead, so I’m what you get.”

Steve releases his grip on Danny’s hand, and Danny stumbles forward, “You don’t need to like me, but you need me. You need _us._ You don’t have to like me, but you better start listening.”

The punch comes so quickly that Steve misses it, and it makes him stagger a couple of steps back. In front of him, Danny is shaking his hand.

“You’re right, I don’t like you.”

He stalks away from Steve, missing the way Steve’s lips stretch into a smile despite the bruise developing on the underside of his chin.

“You’ve got no choice Detective,” he calls after Danny, magnanimously ignoring the way Danny flips him off in response.

Steve grins, “We’re going to get along great.”

_Fin_

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know if i want to continue this, but i might - potentially. if inspiration strikes again.  
> [i'm also on tumblr](https://danny-williams.tumblr.com)  
> 


End file.
